"I never mean (unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure and imperceptible degrees."--George Washington, September 9, 1786 No history of racism in America can be considered complete without taking into account the role that George Washington--the principal founding father--played in helping to mold the racist cast of the new nation. Because General Washington--the universally acknowledged hero of the Revolutionary War--in the postwar period uniquely combined the moral authority, personal prestige, and political power to influence significantly the course and the outcome of the slavery debate, his opinions on the subject of slaves and slavery are of crucial importance to understanding how racism succeeded in becoming an integral and official part of the national fabric during its formative stages. The successful end of the War for Independence in 1783 brought George Washington face-to-face with a fundamental dilemma: how to reconcile the proclaimed ideals of the revolution with the established institution of slavery. So long as black human beings in America could legally be considered the chattel property of whites, the rhetoric of equality and individual freedom was hollow. Progressive voices urged immediate emancipation as the only way to resolve the contradiction; the Southern slaveowners, of course, stood firm for the status quo. Washington was caught squarely in the middle. As a Virginia plantation proprietor and a lifelong slaveholder, Washington had a substantial private stake in the economic slave system of the South. However, in his role as the acknowledged political leader of the country, his overriding concern was the preservation of the Union. If Washington publicly supported emancipation, he would almost certainly have to set an example and take steps to dispose of his Mount Vernon slaves. If he spoke out on the side of slavery, how could he legitimately and conscientiously expect to uphold and defend the humanistic goals and moral imperatives of the new nation as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? His was a balancing act that became more and more difficult to sustain with the passing years. Relying primarily on Washington's own words--his correspondence, diaries, and other written records--supplemented by letters, comments, and eyewitness reports of family members, friends, employees, aides, correspondents, colleagues, and visitors to Mount Vernon, together with contemporary newspaper clippings and official documents pertaining to Washington's relationships with African Americans, Fritz Hirschfeld traces Washington's transition from a conventional slaveholder to a lukewarm abolitionist. George Washington and Slavery will be an essential addition to the historiography of eighteenth-century America and of Washington himself.
About the Author Fritz Hirschfeld is the editor of the John Hancock papers. October 1997. 272 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Biblio. Index. Illus. ISBN 0-8262-1135-6. $29.95t.
"I found The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne to be an outstanding work of scholarship that is also readable and even*time after time*entertaining. . . . It is certain to become the definitive biography of Hawthorne's Salem years."--Buford Jones Although most writers on Nathaniel Hawthorne touch on the importance of the town of Salem, Massachusetts, to his life and career, no detailed study has been published on the background bequeathed to him by his ancestors and present to him during his life in that town. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne examines Salem's past and the role of Hawthorne's ancestors in two of the town's great events*the coming of the Quakers in the 1660s and the witchcraft delusion of 1692. Margaret B. Moore thoroughly investigates Hawthorne's family, his education before college (about which almost nothing has been known), and Salem's religious and political influences on him. She details what Salem had to offer Hawthorne in the way of entertainment and stimulation, discusses his friends and acquaintances, and examines the role of women influential in his life*particularly Mary Crowninshield Silsbee and Sophia Peabody. Nathaniel Hawthorne felt a strong attachment to Salem. No matter what he wrote about the town, it was the locale for many of his stories, sketches, a novel, and a fragmentary novel. Salem history haunted him, and Salem people fascinated him. And Salem seems to have a perennial fascination for readers, not just for Hawthorne scholars. New information from primary sources, including letters (many unpublished), diaries, and contemporary newspapers, adds much not previously known about Salem in the early nineteenth century. Moore has found new sources in various manuscript collections, such as the privately owned Felt-White Collection and the Richards and Ashburner Papers in the National Library in Scotland. She also uses extensively the many manuscript collections at the Peabody Essex Museum. By tracing the influence of Salem on Hawthorne's writing, The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne makes clear that Hawthorne not only was aware of his "own dear native place" but also drew upon it consciously and subconsciously in his work. This book will contribute to a better understanding of Hawthorne as man and writer and of Salem's vital part in his life and work.
About the Author Margaret B. Moore is an independent scholar. She has published widely on Hawthorne and is currently secretary of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society. Moore lives in Athens, Georgia.
December 1997. 296 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Biblio. Index. ISBN 0-8262-1149-6. $37.50s.
Do Americans, in all their cultural diversity, share any fundamental consensus? Does such a consensus, or anything else, make America exceptional in the modern world? Since 1960 most historians have answered no--except perhaps for the current nostalgia for the Eisenhower years (the "Ozzie and Harriet" years of popular recollection) of middle-class American prosperity. In Republic of the Dispossessed social historian Rowland Berthoff maintains not only that there was--and still is--a middle-class consensus and that America is exceptional in it but that it goes back some five hundred years. The consensus stems from all those European peasants and artisans who, from 1600 to 1950, fled dispossession in the Old World. They brought with them basic social values that acted as a template for middle-class American values. To consider modern American society as exceptional--that is, as distinctive and different from any contemporary European pattern of thought--is therefore, in Berthoff's theory, not at all the "illogical absurdity" that current conventional wisdom makes it. The Berthoff thesis, as he develops it in these ten essays from throughout the course of his career, is well worth a second look by those within and beyond the field of social history. It suggests that the ideal--both peasant and classical republican-- of maintaining a balance between personal liberty and communal equality has long inspired American reaction to the drastic modern changes of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Observing that most Americans still see themselves as independent, basically equal, middle-class citizens, Berthoff explains the current apprehension among Americans that at the end of the twentieth century they are once again being dispossessed-- thus, the current emphasis on "traditional values." Because that problem is the same that worried their European ancestors as much as five hundred years ago, Berthoff argues, the time has come to face the question head-on. About the Author Rowland Berthoff is William Eliot Smith Professor Emeritus of History at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of, several works, including An Unsettled People: Social Order and Disorder in American History. 1997. 264 pages. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Index. ISBN 0-8262-1101-1. $39.95s. Complete Catalog Order Information and Order Form University of Missouri Press Home Page Search All University of Missouri Press Pages Zion in the Valley: The Jewish Community of St. Louis; Volume I, 1807 Zion in the Valley The Jewish Community of St. Louis Volume I, 1807-1907 Walter Ehrlich St. Louis contains one of the largest Jewish communities in the interior of the United States. Yet, despite the important contributions of St. Louis Jews to the city's cultural and economic growth and to national and international Jewry, no history of their accomplishments has heretofore been written. ethnic, and immigration history. Zion in the Valley is an invaluable contribution to the field of Jewish studies. It will appeal to scholars and students of Jewish, urban, and ethnic history, as well as to members of the broader St. Louis community.
About the Author Walter Ehrlich is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of They Have No Rights: Dred Scott's Struggle for Freedom, Presidential Impeachment: An American Dilemma, and We the People: Two Hundred Years of the Constitution. April 1997. 488 pages. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Biblio. Index. 44 illus. ISBN 0-8262-1098 $35.95t.
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